Materials Developed

Much of what I used, I inherited from previous instructors. I did create a few of my own items, however, such as a blague du jour to illustrate the day’s topic with a play on words. One of my goals was to increase our use of technology; to this end, I presented daily lessons in PowerPoint and sought audio and video materials such as songs and commercials on the web. For example, we listened to an excerpt of Le Petit Prince on www.audible.fr when we were working on intonation patterns. I also tried to incorporate recent French cinema. Paris, je t’aime was released just in time for the end of the semester, and I used the final segment in this film as a review activity on American pronunciation of French. Some examples of the materials I developed are included with samples of my students’ work below.

Student Work

The recitation assignment targeted specific segments. Students recorded themselves reading the text, and I evaluated their pronunciation according to the rubric below. Students then re-recorded the text, taking into consideration the corrections indicated. The second recording was evaluated according to how well the previous errors were corrected. This one is a particularly good example of a student’s progress from one reading to the next (audio soon to come).

Paris, je t’aime

For the final review, we treated the character in the “14e arrondissement” segment of the film as a student in F315 submitting a recitation. Students were asked to pay special attention to the words in bold (rather than try to evaluate the entire text) and complete the rubric on the back. Additionally, they were asked to provide corrective feedback, i.e. how to correct the most glaring of problems.